This invention relates generally to animal traps and, more particularly, to a dog-proof trap-setting apparatus. The trap-setting apparatus enables the steady and easy setting of an animal trap that is otherwise awkward and dangerous.
Animal traps have been used for many years to catch or kill undesirable animals, including rodents such as rats or larger nuisances such as raccoons or possums. Some traps include spring loaded clamps. A user moves the clamp to a “set” configuration and the spring snaps the clamp to a tripped configuration to capture or kill an animal when triggered by the target animal's proximity. Unfortunately, these trigger-type traps are often very tricky to set and often get inadvertently triggered by the person setting them, leading to frustration and fear of injury. One such trap is the dog-proof type trap which includes a structure having a configuration that does not allow a dog to become in dangerous proximity to the trap mechanism of a popular type of an animal trap.
Various devices have been proposed or marketed that seek to provide assistance in setting a trap. Although assumably effective for their intended purposes, the existing devices do not use the trap itself to leverage the trap-setting procedure. Specifically, existing trap-setting tools do not include a cam member to impart rotational torque in order to move a spring member and a clamp member from a “tripped” configuration to a “rigging” configuration or from the rigging configuration to a “set” configuration.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a trap-setting apparatus that includes a cam member for quickly and safely setting a dog-proof trap with minimal effort. Further, it would be desirable to have a trap-setting apparatus that selectively hooks onto the trap's main body member and onto the trap's spring member so as to enable setting the trap with a simple repositioning of a handle.